Book Review

Country Music Annual 2000. Edited by Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000. ISBN 0-8131-0989-2 (pbk.). Pp. 184. $20.00 (pbk.)

Country Music Annual 2001. Edited by Charles K. Wolfe and James e. Akenson. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001. ISBN 0-8131-0990-6 (pbk.). Pp. 216. $20.00 (pbk.)

Country Music Annual 2002. Edited by Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2002. ISBN 0-8131-0991-4 (pbk.). Pp. 232. $20.00 (pbk.)

The Women of Country Music: A Reader. Edited by Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2003. ISBN 0-8131-2280-5 (cloth). Pp. 240. $28.00 (cloth)

One need look no further than the numerous country music papers presented at recent academic conferences and the almost overwhelming amount of new literature streaming forth from university and mass-market presses to find evidence of academe's growing interest in country music in the past decade. As editors Charles Wolfe and James Akenson posit in the introduction to Country Music Annual 2000, the field of country music studies is as broadly defined as the genre itself, drawing scholars from diverse academic backgrounds who, regardless of their disciplinary alliances (or occasional lack thereof), find common ground in their enjoyment of the music (2-3).